Add some fireworks, throw in a few mimes, blow up a crate of disco records and dress up some animals. Now, that's the stuff that Veeck, the son of a Hall of Famer, the co-owner of a few minor league franchises and the baron of baseball gimmickry, takes seriously.

And if there's one thing that Veeck puts above almost a century worth of that pageantry, it's his daughter Rebecca, who has helped make St. Augustine the Veecks' home away from home.

She struggled on a basic vision test in first grade, and that led to a chain-reaction of visiting doctors and testing. Then came the diagnosis -- cone-rod dystrophy, which is a form of retinitis pigmentosa. It's a progressive, incurable disease in the eyes that slowly turns vision into darkness. And that's led Rebecca to the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, where she will be entering her senior year in the fall.

For all of the fun and festive promotions -- Tonya Harding mini-bat night, the infamous "Disco Demolition" that nearly ended his baseball career in 1979 -- Veeck comes across as a father who just loves his daughter and wanted her to have as normal of a life as she could.

And the daughter, a blonde-haired, 18-year-old who loves horses, karate and has an affinity for musical acts from the 1960s, is nothing short of a miniature version of her dad. She may pursue a career in massage therapy, or she may try and top one of the most infamous promotion stunts in sports history. With the Veecks, nothing's off the board. Who needs sight when they've got vision.

"Well, I am fifth generation you know," Rebecca said. "It's in the blood."

Sharing through humor

The Veecks go back nearly a century, and the show that they put on goes back with it.

William Veeck Sr. was the president of the Chicago Cubs. His son, William, followed that same path. Ever seen the ivy walls at Wrigley Field? William Jr. planted the ivy. He owned the Cleveland Indians, signed Larry Doby, who became the first black player in the American League, and began pulling off stunts such as sending 3-foot, 7-inch midget Eddie Gaedel to the plate during a 1951 game with the St. Louis Browns.

William Jr., who owned the White Sox on two separate occasions, made people laugh, even at his own misfortunes. He lost part of his leg during World War II and had a wooden leg. Mike said that his father used it to make points, turning something awkward into something positive. Rebecca, who never met her grandfather, sounds just like him. She splices in humor about her visual impairment and shoots a zinger back at her father when he makes a remark about her bumping in to something.

"People were very uncomfortable when they saw a guy with a wooden leg ... take his leg off, swim a length underwater, and then swim back," he said. "And then the kids would go up, he'd show them (his leg) he'd drive a nail into his leg, and then tell the kids to go home and see if your old man can do that.

"Now, I use (stories like that) every day, what I learned from him in trying to teach Rebecca and letting her teach us back, because she's right, it takes you a long time to get it sometimes. But the fact is, we don't have an idea. As parents, we say, 'We know what you're going through.' But that's not true. We don't."

'All right to be different'

In some ways, Veeck was destined to be the funny guy carrying on the family name and tradition. But it deviated, too.

Veeck said that getting such a diagnosis about Rebecca shook him to his core. As a guy who's always done theater, and done it as good as anyone in sports, losing control to a disease is unthinkable.

"I was devastated; my first reaction was how could this wonderful, articulate, fun child have this and how could I not be able to protect her," Veeck said. "Your reaction is you're really Neanderthal, it's really primitive. You're supposed to protect your family but especially your daughter. It's that kind of relationship."

Then came something completely different. Instead of hunkering down and waiting for the disease to claim her vision, Rebecca and her family did something else. They did everything else.

They hit the road. They traveled. They lived. They let Rebecca see everything now that she wouldn't be able to in the future.

Rebecca has visited Belize, been to Mexico, gotten lost in Alcatraz and loved a visit to a Japanese American internment camp. She gives the Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame a sterling endorsement and rattles off the musical acts that she's been to. Aretha. Elton. Moody Blues. Joe Cocker.

"Only 14 (states) left to go," she said, trying to tick off the places in the United States that she hadn't yet visited.

Rebecca, who has been at FSDB since February 2009, said that attending mainstream school in the Veecks' primary hometown in South Carolina was emotionally taxing on her. Of the 3,500 students in her school, she was one of just two who were visually impaired. Trying to fit in when she was surrounded by people who didn't understand what she was facing was turbulent. Always active and visible in her father's minor league baseball operations, Rebecca said that she felt totally out of place.

"Especially for girls that are visually impaired, guys are scared ... what am I, a freak?," she said. "And it's not fair. (I've had people) put fingers in my face, they even threw rocks in my back. And girls would put water in the bathroom when the teachers weren't around ... they put water on the floor and a banana peel ... because they wanted to trip me."

Mike said that it was difficult for him to see Rebecca encounter so much in a conventional school. She didn't talk to him about what she faced, preferring just to shut herself off.

"The only part, as her father, I suffer with is the isolation, that's why this school has been such a godsend," Veeck said. "And so the isolation is (the most difficult part). You watch, because nobody really knows how to deal with it. Parties and things ... Rebecca can get around 17,000 people at a concert with no problem; she just knows her way around, but they don't invite her to a party on a boat because there's going to be 35 people. That's the part I wasn't prepared for.

"Watching her go into school from 100 feet away and watching her bump into things and not being helped, it just breaks your heart. Here, it's all right to be (different). Being visually impaired is an inconvenience in this country, but it ain't here, at FSD and B."

King of promotions

Veeck knows something about trying to fit in. It's approaching the 31st anniversary of the moment that nearly ended it all for him professionally.

"Disco Demolition Night" on July 12, 1979, is Veeck's signature moment and one he'd probably like to have back if he could.

A doubleheader between the Detroit Tigers and White Sox was to pay explosive homage to the rise -- and hatred -- of disco music. Veeck teamed up with radio disc jockeys Steve Dahl and Garry Meier for the promotion. Fans who brought their disco records to the stadium got in for a reduced admission price. Those records were to be blown up before the start of the second game. The whole promotion spiraled out of control. The Chicago Tribune said that the official attendance was "more than 59,000" fans inside Comiskey Park and another 15,000 outside of it. Few were there to actually see the game.

When the explosion blasted the crate of disco records, fans stormed the field and tore up as much of it as they could. There were 37 arrests made, and the White Sox had to forfeit the game. It remains the last game to be forfeited in the American League. His father sold the White Sox a year later, and Mike said he was essentially untouchable to major league teams.

"I've lived so long that now it's kind of legendary," Veeck said of that night. "If all the things that happened, or all the people who say they were there had been there, we'd still own the White Sox, we'd still be in business."

Veeck didn't fit, not in the majors. In his time away, he dove in to minor league baseball with a passion, getting involved in 1989, partly because he was a visionary. While he had stints with the Detroit Tigers, Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays, minor league ball is what he's done the best. Veeck is the part owner of five minor league franchises -- along with actor Bill Murray and Marv Goldklang -- including the St. Paul Saints, which play in the shadow of the Minnesota Twins' park, Target Field. The Saints, the most recognizable of Veeck franchises, are Rebecca's favorite team.

"(St. Paul) remembers her from being in a basket at the front gate, now they collect dollars for (retina) research, the Rebecca Veeck Fund," Mike said.

And he's still the king of promotions.

Veeck has put Rebecca in a dunking booth and had nuns giving massages. He offered free vasectomies as a draw on Father's Day at a Charleston RiverDogs game, although shelved the idea when The Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, S.C., complained.

"My favorite headline of all time was in the Anchorage newspaper after that ... it said 'Vasectomy Promotion Snipped,'" he said.

You want Elvis nights? There are dozens of them. He's cross-dressed pets, allowed fans to pick lineups and had paper-shredders at the gate on Enron Night.

And Veeck's most memorable?

"My personal favorite was Mime-O-Vision," Veeck said. "We announced one day we were going to replace instant replay with mimes. And in the sixth inning, there was a close play at first base ... five mimes jumped up on top of the dugout and 6,239 people were stupefied. They were like, this is without a doubt, the dumbest thing I've ever seen. The beauty of it was it was a front page photo. It resulted in the world's largest and longest food fight; 20 minutes we held up the game while they threw everything at the mimes that wasn't nailed down."

Finding FSDB

The Veecks sort of stumbled across FSDB.

Mike and his wife, Libby, had toured a similar school in another state and been put off by it. Rebecca had met a friend through the Internet-based phone service, Skype, who told her about FSDB. Having been familiar with the movie "Ray," a movie based on the life of FSDB's most famous alum, Ray Charles, the Veecks decided to research the school a little further. They wound up loving the school and the area from the moment they arrived.

"We went and toured several other state facilities ... her mother cried from the moment we walked in, until the moment we left," Mike said. "We drove up here and it was like, this is where she's got to go."

Rebecca said the school was an instant fit because she was around people who understood her condition. She's learned Braille and begun to learn sign language. If anything, it's opened her mind up to things that weren't possible before.

If there's any sort of fear about not being able to see, or how people will view her, Rebecca shows none of it.

"We all go to sleep happy, you can get everything off your chest and when you go to sleep, it has to get better," Rebecca said. "The next day, you're friends and you start over and everything's OK."

For a girl whose first public speaking engagement came in front of more than 400 people and right after Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell, Rebecca is well aware of the family name, and in a sense, what comes with it. She and her brother, William "Night Train" Veeck, have talked about the show business side of baseball and keeping the legacy going. They may even try to "one up" her father's most infamous disco promotion.

Rebecca doesn't need sight to see what's in front of her.

Just vision, like her dad.

Just like every other Veeck.

*

The Mike Veeck glance

Personal: Has one son, William "Night Train" Veeck, and a daughter, Rebecca, who will be a senior at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. Is married to Libby.

Family ties: The son of baseball Hall of Famer William Veeck Jr., who owned the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians and the St. Louis Browns. His great grandfather, William Veeck Sr., was the president of the Chicago Cubs. Mike's father was well known for putting on stunts during baseball games, such as sending 3-foot-7-inch midget Eddie Gaedel to bat in a game.

Notable: Mike Veeck owns five minor league baseball franchises with various business partners (Brockton, Mass., Charleston, S.C., Fort Myers, St. Paul, Minn. and Sioux Falls, S.D.). Also a public speaker, and runs a company, "Fun Is Good." He has worked for four Major League Baseball teams -- the White Sox, Florida Marlins, Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays. He and his wife live in South Carolina. ... His "Disco Demolition Night" on July 12, 1979, is one of the most well-known, and infamous stunts, in sports history. It led to multiple arrests, his father selling the White Sox shortly after, and ultimately, Mike's absence from Major League Baseball for a lengthy time.

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